


Archaic Kinds of Fun

by rillrill



Category: Veep
Genre: Drunk Sex, F/F, Fight Clubs, Mild Blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-29
Updated: 2016-05-29
Packaged: 2018-07-10 20:47:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7005784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rillrill/pseuds/rillrill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>From: Karen Collins<br/>Still tense? I had an idea. Thought you could use a girl’s day. Consider it a bonding ritual, or don't. Whatever you want.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>To: Karen Collins<br/>I don't "bond."</i>
</p><p>
  <i>From: Karen Collins:<br/>Neither do I.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Archaic Kinds of Fun

The bar’s loud. It’s stupid loud and she’s got a wicked headache coming on, but given the shitstorm of the recount headquarters, she’d rather be here than back in her hotel room. She’d much rather be here, alone, than in her hotel room with anyone else. Bold that, underline it. Anyone else. Disgusting. Truly. She blinks a few times and drains the rest of her gin and tonic. There are not enough of these in the world to erase the idea of Dan’s dick inside her sist—fuck, _stop thinking about it,_ he could not possibly be more dead to her now. Physically, viscerally. She’d be hard-pressed to come up with something more skin-crawlingly gross, a harder dealbreaker than that.

And the question that she can’t shake from her mind, the one that has always tugged at her even as much as she firmly insisted it doesn’t matter: why do they go for the dumb ones? Is there honestly something so firmly off-putting about being able to get shit accomplished that makes a man’s cock go flaccid at the mere idea of it? She was pretty fucking blasted. She gives herself that out, feeling her cheeks heat up as she remembers the string of unanswered wrong-number texts. She was blasted and she wanted company and there’s nothing wrong with that, other than the idea that if Dan had wanted her, he could’ve had her. And he didn’t want her. At least not more than her dumb-as-shit sister. She’s that unfuckable, or whatever. And Dan’s the type of man whose opinion matters _way less_ than most men’s. _That’s_ the clincher. She has every line of logic and reasoning at her disposal, and she should be able to argue herself out of whatever she’s feeling, but the more she works at it, chews it over, the more tangled the Gordian knot of anxiety and nausea in her stomach gets.

“Another G and T,” she tells the bartender, who nods. Amy handed over her AmEx three of these ago.

“Well, hi there,” she hears, and for a minute she’s about to turn and knock her sister’s block off before she realizes that she put Sophie on a flight back to Maryland twelve hours ago, and then she actually does turn, and that coil of anger tightens even further.

“Karen,” she says, through a fake smile. The bartender slides her new drink down in front of her, taking the old glass of ice cubes away. Amy grabs the two little red cocktail straws in the side of the glass and stabs through the slice of lime without breaking eye contact with Karen Collins.

Karen smiles back. She orders a glass of pinot noir. “House is fine,” she says to the bartender, and then turns back to Amy. “So. Flying solo?”

“Why does that matter?” Amy retorts, and Karen cocks a brow.

“I figured you’d be with what’s-his-name,” she shrugs. “Brainless Beauty. What happens in Nevada, you know. It’s a little bit of a cliché, but —”

“Stop. Shut up.” Amy knocks back a third of her drink in a single go, wipes her mouth on the back of her hand. “Brainless Beauty can shove his dick through a paper shredder, for all I care, and I’d do it myself if I didn’t know the campaign can’t afford a new shredder.”

“Amy,” says Karen, that irritatingly sanctimonious tone coming back to her voice, and the blood pulses between Amy’s fingers. “Have you ever considered taking up a hobby? Kickboxing, for example?”

“That’s a highly inappropriate question to ask, first of all, and second, with what fucking time?” Amy says. “I don’t think there’s a hard enough no for that answer.”

“You’re so _tense_ ,” Karen says. And Amy can only laugh, because — seriously? How many times has she heard that one, too? _You’re so tense_ is the pre-sex prelude equivalent to _I love smart women_ in the afterglow. Except Karen isn’t adjusting a necktie she isn’t wearing or looking at Amy like she’s thinking about her naked. Which.  
  
_Whoa._  
  
No, no, _fuck_ no, she’s not going to do this, her brain isn’t going to go there, either. She ought to put up an electric fence of neurons around the appropriate thought patterns, or get someone to prescribe her whatever psychiatric drugs will do that for her, because she’s not going to think about this. She’s definitely _not_ going to think about fucking Karen. That’s ridiculous.  
  
Because, like, first of all, she hates Karen.  
  
Amy clears her throat, suddenly very cognizant of the silence that followed Karen’s last statement. “I’m not tense,” she says, taking another hurried sip of her drink and desperately trying to remember what the opposite of tension is. “I’m, uh, flexible.” And then she coughs, hard, because that fucking wasn’t it, either.  
  
And as if on cue, Karen just kind of laughs a little, condescending, almost bitchy, and Amy’s body feels like it’s filled with angry bees. She coughs the rest of her breath out into her elbow and sucks in damp, gross hotel-bar air, and looks up at where Karen is looking at her with a knowing little quirk to her eyebrow.  
  
“ _Okay_ , Amy,” says Karen, and there’s something that’s just awful enough to her voice that Amy can’t fucking stand it anymore. She turns bodily on the bar stool and reaches out and grabs Karen by the lapels of her lady blazer, and grinds her molars as she feels how nice the material between her fingers is, and then she adjusts her grip to hold it tighter.  
  
“You are the worst,” she says in a low, clear voice. “I’ve made this clear! I cannot believe I am sitting here, having a conversation with you, after having made incredibly clear how much of a personal pain you are in my exhausted, overworked, can’t-get-a-dick-after-practically-begging-for-it ass, and yet! Here you are! I honestly need to know what you’re doing here, and what it will take for you to leave me the fuck alone so that I can just—”  
  
Karen raises her other eyebrow, this time, joining them both together practically in the middle of her forehead, and Amy hears an inhuman growl coming out of her own mouth, and she realizes that she’s probably shaking with rage. “Well, go on,” Karen says, eerily calm and relaxed, and Amy closes her eyes. “If you want me to go, a simple hint would’ve been sufficient.”  
  
“Oh my _God_ ,” Amy snarls, and she realizes she’s still got Karen’s lapels in her fist as Karen’s hands reach up to grip her wrists. She starts to let go, but Karen shakes her head.  
  
“You’re tense,” she says again, and Amy doesn’t say anything. “What do you want?”  
  
Amy grits her teeth. “I need to have sex with someone,” she says, bluntly, each syllable landing heavy on the floor between them. _Not with you_ , she wants to add, but as she opens her mouth to say it, Karen interrupts.  
  
“Well, if that’s what you’re asking, I’m on board, but if you’re not suggesting anything, we can both forget it ever happened—” and Amy is so far beyond being able to fucking care, at this point, and so she yanks Karen forward off the bar stool, pulling her into a standing position, and Karen standing is about as tall as Amy is on the stool, which means that it’s a lot easier to attack Karen’s stupid bullshit-blowhole of a mouth with her own from this angle.  
  
The good news is that her room is, blessedly, empty when they get there. Karen’s so much stronger than she looks, pushes Amy against the door and kicks off her heels to bring herself down to Amy’s level. _Bitch even kisses ambivalently_ , and it’s aggressively not enough, so Amy bites down on Karen’s stupid lower lip, scrabbling at her jacket. Karen pulls her mouth away, pushing her hand up Amy’s skirt and skirting the hem of her underwear.  
  
“For the love of God,” Amy groans, canting her hips up enough to allow better access, “please stop taking the goddamn scenic route,” and she’s rewarded with Karen’s fingers, two of them, shoving her soaked underwear aside and driving into her cunt. She gasps, shuts her eyes so she doesn’t have to look at Karen’s smug smirk, feels a soft mouth rough at the corners with remnants of dayworn lipstick working along her neck, where she’s most sensitive, where anyone could get her off with enough tongue and teeth and rapt attention —  
  
It takes five minutes, maybe a little less, and when Amy comes she works her fingers into Karen’s hair and pulls, and Karen gasps before biting down on her neck hard enough to bruise.  
  
If she had a little more foresight, she’d have prepared for this moment, to order Karen out into the hall and lock the door behind her, but she’s neglected to take off her own heels, and that’s what fucks her over. She almost rolls an ankle when she attempts to stand upright, and Karen catches her, steadies her against the door.  
  
“Shit,” Amy mutters, and then, “fine, I owe you for that.”

* * *

It’s been a week and a half since Nevada and now, apparently, Karen Collins won’t fucking leave her alone.

Amy _is_ tense, okay? Amy _lives_ tense. Tension is Amy’s default setting, the frequency at which she vibrates straight out of the box, no USB charge. And the thing is, tension has never fucked her over. One glaring exception aside — which she generally tries to forget ever happened, because the DNC was not her at her best, that was not one for the Amy Brookheimer Career Highlight Reel — she knows how to use the tension to her benefit. Surf the wave all the way to the crest and then just ride it out, don’t get sucked under, stay afloat, stay alive.

Tension: one of her closer friends. Possibly her best friend. Not like she has many to choose from. That list has probably been longer in the past.

Except, well. It’s been a week and a half since Nevada and a week and a half since the capital-M Mistake. And, again, if she were smarter, she would’ve known not to go there in the first place. Don’t fuck enemies, don’t fuck friends, definitely don’t conflate the two. That’s what she thinks when her phone buzzes with an arriving text on a Sunday morning.

 _From: Karen Collins_  
_Still tense? I had an idea. Thought you could use a girl’s day. Consider it a bonding ritual, or don't. Whatever you want._  
  
Amy blinks at the words on her screen. She’s exchanged all of seven other texts with Karen, all of which pre-convention, pre-meltdown, and apparently it’s like none of that ever happened.  
  
She taps out a text. _I don’t "bond_ ."

 _From: Karen Collins_  
_Neither do I._  
  
_To: Karen Collins:_  
_???_  
  
Karen’s response is half a minute coming. _It’s not like that. Well, it is a bonding ritual, but you may be underestimating my intentions. I can swing by and pick you up. You live in the city?_  
  
Amy wants to hurl her phone across the room, but it’s been a week and a half and she’s kind of wondering what Karen’s angle could possibly be here. They’d politely agreed not to speak about what’d happened in Nevada — not Vegas, _Nevada_ — that same night. So this makes no fucking sense.  
  
And still — she’s kind of curious. She’ll follow this rabbit just to see how far it goes, because being around Karen is like having verbal bamboo shoots driven underneath her own close-trimmed fingernails, and yet there’s something that’s just inane enough about her to make her _fascinating_ . So she texts back with her address, and downs the rest of her shitty Keurig coffee, and puts on underwear she wouldn’t be too uncomfortable letting the staff at whatever spa Karen’s taking her to see her in.  
  
Of course, when Karen pulls up in her Audi coupe, she’s in workout clothes, and gives Amy a critical once-over from the passenger. “You think maybe you might want to change,” she says, her voice strangely affectless, no rise to indicate a question mark near the end.  
  
Amy frowns. “Please don’t tell me we’re going to a workout class,” she says, and Karen kind of laughs, shaking her head.  
  
“Oh, no, no, nothing like that. Well, it’s kind of like that. But not really. It’s a workout. Just —” She flicks her fingers at Amy’s Banana Republic separates. “You’d feel better in something more appropriate, that’s all. I’ll wait.”  
  
Amy doesn’t say anything, just climbs out of the car and hauls back into her apartment, throwing on yoga pants and a Penn t-shirt in record time. Sensible sports bra. More comfortable than a regular one, anyway. Fuck it.  
  
“I thought this might take the edge off,” Karen says as they drive. “Trust me, the buzz you get? The adrenaline? Better than an orgasm.” She winks, and Amy very nearly dry-heaves.  
  
“So what the fuck is this place?” she asks instead. “SoulCycle? Yoga? Crossfit?”  
  
“Getting closer,” says Karen, and then, “Amy, have you ever been punched in the face?”  
  
_What._  
  
Single-syllable, flat what.  
  
They pull up outside what looks like a pretty fucking nice single-family house on Reservoir Road. Ritzy. Old-money territory, tree-lined street. Amy is staring at Karen, her shoulders practically up to her ears with the rattling tension in her body. She’s ninety percent sure this is how she’s going to die. Karen’s a murderer. Karen was probably Selina’s first ever public-defense client and she got off because Selina used to be good at her job, or something, and this is how she kills now, driving defenseless women out to residential neighborhoods and then killing them and stuffing them in toolsheds and getting off on the Missing White Woman searches that take over the 24-hour news cycle and knock off whatever political scandal might be brewing from the radar. If Selina’s opted to have her killed to get the newsrooms to stop paying such close attention to her fucked-up undereye area and the goddamn recount, well, Amy’s got to fucking hand it to her, it’s a shrewder move than she would’ve thought possible, but also —  
  
“Do I _look_ like I’ve ever been punched in the face?”  
  
Karen finds street parking, maneuvers her little compact into a parallel space with relative ease. “Well, maybe you have and maybe you haven’t,” she says, conversational, as if it’s not a creepy fucking question to ask someone — anyone, let alone someone you’ve only ever exchanged one-sided screaming and a couple regrettable drunk orgasms with. “But I’ve been thinking, and I think you might find it beneficial to punch someone else in the face, and I thought I’d just prepare you for the possibility that it may very well happen to you.”  
  
Amy has no fucking idea what’s happening. Karen turns off the car, pulls her keys from the ignition. “This is a female fight club, by the way,” she says, and Amy’s pretty sure she blacks out at that.  
  
But she follows.  
  
The house is nice. It’s really fucking nice. She’s introduced to the blonde inhabitant, who flashes a gleaming grin at Karen and envelopes her in a hug, and then Amy suddenly realizes: “Fuck, I’ve met you.”  
  
“Of course you have!” she chirps. “I used to date your boss!”  
  
“Gary’s not my boss,” Amy says much too quickly, but the blonde just tips her head to one side, giving her a smug little smile that’s way too much like Karen’s for her comfort.  
  
“Well, he did spend a lot more time with the Vice President than you did,” she says, in a sing-songy little tone that makes Amy clench her fists preemptively. “C’mon. You know I’m right.”  
  
“Dana is one of my best friends,” Karen interjects, laying a polite hand on Amy’s shoulder. “Dee, I thought Amy might make a fun addition to our little circle. She’s got so much tension in her body, see? Look at those shoulders.”  
  
“Mm.” Dana clicks her tongue. “Well, you two can head down to the basement. I think everyone else is here. I’ll be down in a minute.” She flashes a grin at Amy, who is staring at her in horrified silence.  
  
Karen’s hand moves down to Amy’s back, and she jerks her shoulders back, batting it away. “Why the fuck would you bring me to a fight club?” she hisses, and Karen raises her eyebrows knowingly.  
  
“You know, Ame,” she says, and it’s like nails on a chalkboard, hearing that nickname come out of _her_ mouth, “from the moment I saw you, I knew you wanted to beat the tar out of me.”  
  
“What the _fuck_.”  
  
“I thought, you know, it’s a shame that we got off onto the footing that we did. Because you could’ve really used this. I think all of us do,” Karen continues as she leads Amy toward the basement staircase, which is covered in nice beige carpet. Amy can see the fresh vaccuum tracks in the rug. “Do you want to leave?”  
  
“I — not really, no.” The honest answer comes out in a jumble of unauthorized, unwanted syllables, and Karen smirks again, a little bit triumphant as Amy rushes to justify that honesty. “I mean, I should leave, but —”  
  
“But your body is just filled with _rage_ , isn’t it?” Karen says, knowing, and Amy’s jaw clicks as she opens her mouth to argue. Point taken. “It’s just a natural part of being a woman! Men have the right idea, with the way they work out their differences with fists, but honestly, it’s so messy, getting into fights with strangers, risking arrest, risking their lives, really.”  
  
The basement is brightly lit. The floor is plush black carpet. The couches are black. Three other women are sitting — lounging, practically — on one of them, feet up, looking casual and manicured in their Lululemon. Amy blinks again. She’s pretty sure one of them is a prominent senator’s wife.  
  
“And women take twice as much shit than men do,” Amy finds herself echoing. “From men and from other women.”  
  
Karen nods, clicking her tongue. “Relational aggression’s a hell of a weapon, but at some point, it’s got to come to blows. You say you’ve never been punched in the face?”  
  
Amy looks around. The senator’s wife gives her an encouraging little nod.  
  
“Only by my sister,” Amy confesses. “But I was 19. And I gave her twice as good as I got.”  
  
Karen laughs. “You want to punch me?”  
  
“I — this is fucking crazy.” But her blood thrums with the suggestion anyway. She’s already done twice as worse.  
  
Karen takes a step back, shifting her balance from foot to foot. Sets down her keys on the coffee table, and Amy, instinctively, does the same. At least she’s not wearing earrings to take off. At least she’s not —  
  
“Hit me,” Karen commands with folded arms, drawing herself up to her full height, imperious and just a little bit _cunty_ , and something inside Amy snaps, and she surges forward, slapping her, open-handed across the face.  
  
Karen takes a step backward, looking bemused. “How’d that feel?”  
  
Amy shakes out her palm, feels the stinging in her skin rattle up to her elbow. “Okay.”  
  
“Right,” says Karen. “Now, you want to try hitting me again? Like a grown woman, this time?”  
  
“I don’t fucking _care_ ,” Amy says incoherently, skin itching and buzzing with frustration and anger and, potent, untapped _violence_ , and that’s when Karen swings at her. Amy moves her arm up to block it on instinct, but she’s too slow, and Karen’s fist connects with her mouth with a sickening impact that hurts like a motherfucking bitch .  
  
And that’s when Amy — to put it in a ladylike fashion — fucking loses it.  
  
And it’s good, immediately. It’s exactly what she needs. She gets the feeling that Karen’s going easy on her, but she doesn’t care; the longer they draw out the grappling and half-blocked blows, the better. Fucking Karen was good but this is better. This is better than any of the sex she’s ever had. Her foot connects with the back of Karen’s kneecap and Karen goes down hard on the rug, and it’s half a second before Amy trips on an outstretched leg and goes down with her.  
  
“This what you wanted?” she manages to hiss on a heaving exhale, right before Karen hits her hard on her upper right arm, fist glancing off her bicep and grazing her breast on the outshot. Amy gasps and rears up.  
  
It gets unfair and dirty almost immediately, but not dirty in the way she expects; it’s like they’ve never so much as touched each other before. It’s like there are no rules, and Karen’s not pulling her punches anymore, which means that Amy, blessedly, doesn’t have to bother to do so either. She can taste blood in her mouth from the lip that split on that first impact, and there’s a stream of it coming from Karen’s nose, and for the first time in God knows how long — since the convention, since the start of the primary, since college, since birth, maybe — there’s no fucking pretension of good manners and good behavior. Just fists and hands and Karen’s surprising strength, grappling Amy onto her back, fearless.  
  
“That’s a pin,” Dana calls from the staircase, and Amy and Karen both look over in her direction. “Want to keep going, Ame?”  
  
Karen looks down at her, and Amy blinks slowly, taking a deep breath, licking the stream of blood from the side of her mouth, tasting copper and chapstick.  
  
“Let’s go again,” Amy says, against her better judgment, instead of gracefully bowing out. Because she’s not a graceful loser. She’s never learned how to accept defeat, and someday that’s gonna be the death of her, but until then, “Best out of three.”  
  
Karen holds up a hand to help her to her feet. Amy’s chest is heaving as she resets.

* * *

“Kat Von D,” Karen says as she glances over at Amy, staring at the bruise already starting to bloom around her eye in the passenger-side flip-down mirror. “Peach concealer over the bruise, then set it all with the foundation. Full coverage. No questions asked.”  
  
Amy licks her lips, winces. Her whole body hurts like a bitch now that the adrenaline’s worn off. “Thanks,” she says, and Karen shrugs.  
  
“I figured you could use some sort of recreation that doesn’t feel like an attempt at being a better person,” she says, and it’s a testament to the utter weirdness of this woman that Amy doesn’t bat an eye at this statement. “Look at you now. Those shoulders have dropped six inches in the last 90 minutes.”  
  
Amy huffs a laugh despite herself. “What happened in Nevada —”  
  
“Never happened,” Karen says smoothly. “Too dangerous. I’ve never been a fan of that kind of behavior. Too much margin for error. But if you want to do _this_ again, let me know. We meet once a month.”  
  
“I, uh.” Amy is lost for words as Karen pulls up outside her apartment. “Let _me_ know? The next time?”  
  
And Karen smirks again, sporting a brilliant shiner of her own and a matching bruise under her nose, and Amy wishes she were tense enough to get mad at that shitty little expression, but she’s too proud of her handiwork to do much more than offer a nervous, nervy laugh.  
  
“Will do,” says Karen, and Amy climbs out of the Audi and watches her drive off, and — in the most surreal part of the day — realizes she hasn’t checked her phone once since Dana’s house.  
  
There’s a text from Dan. _Heading to NH in the morning, want to grab a drink?_  
  
Her thumbs hover over the screen, trying to figure out the most eloquent way to deliver a hard no, before she groans and gives up on the response altogether. Clicks the power button and slides it back into her Meyer 2016 quarter-zip fleece pocket as she unlocks her door.  
  
There’s a bottle of wine in the fridge, and she’s got some epsom salts in the bathroom. And, apparently, a fuckload of soul-searching to do.

**Author's Note:**

> .... I mean. Look. I'm sorry.
> 
> Title is from "Glory and Gore" by Lorde.
> 
> DEPICTION =/= ENDORSEMENT, IN CASE YOU NEED IT SPELLED OUT FOR YOU.


End file.
